bishops, saying, 'My clerk is singing very well,' whereat the rude
bishop replied, 'Any clown in our countryside drones as well as that to
his oxen at their ploughing'?[6] It is certain too that Bodo agreed with
the names which the great Charles gave to the months of the year in his
own Frankish tongue; for he called January 'Winter-month', February
'Mud-month', March 'Spring-month', April 'Easter-month', May
'Joy-month', June 'Plough-month', July 'Hay-month', August
'Harvest-month', September 'Wind-month', October 'Vintage-month',
November 'Autumn-month', and December 'Holy-month'.[7]

And Bodo was a superstitious creature. The Franks had been Christian now
for many years, but Christian though they were, the peasants clung to
old beliefs and superstitions. On the estates of the holy monks of St
Germain you would have found the country people saying charms which were
hoary with age, parts of the lay sung by the Frankish ploughman over his
bewitched land long before he marched southwards into the Roman Empire,
or parts of the spell which the bee-master performed when he swarmed his
bees on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Christianity has coloured these
charms, but it has not effaced their heathen origin; and because the
tilling of the soil is the oldest and most unchanging of human
occupations, old beliefs and superstitions cling to it and the old gods
stalk up and down the brown furrows, when they have long vanished from
houses and roads. So on Abbot Irminon's estates the peasant-farmers
muttered charms over their sick cattle (and over their sick children
too) and said incantations over the fields to make them fertile. If you
had followed behind Bodo when he broke his first furrow you would have
probably seen him take out of his jerkin a little cake, baked for him by
Ermentrude out of different kinds of meal, and you would have seen him
stoop and lay it under the furrow and sing: